HOUSTON (Reuters) - Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of Allen Stanford's defunct financial firm, pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction on Thursday for her role in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

Canadian criminals have been placed behind bars for multiple years for Ponzi schemes far less sophisticated or lucrative than the scam Gary Sorenson and Milowe Brost used to defraud some 2,000 investors of between $100 and $200 million between 1999 and 2008.
A judge is scheduled to hand down a prison sentence later this month after a 11-member jury found Brost and Sorenson guilty of fraud on Saturday in one of Canada’s biggest Ponzi scams following one of the longest criminal trials in Calgary’s history.

Hershey Canada Inc. has been fined $4-million for its role in a price-fixing chocolate cartel.
The confectioner pleaded guilty to conspiring, agreeing or arranging to fix the price of chocolate products in Canada in 2007 before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto and contravening the criminal conspiracy provision in the Competition Act.